Making the Most of Murphy’s Law

So I’m driving home at the end of the second day of a week-long training course. I’m tired, I’m hungry, I have a long trip cross-town ahead of me. I grip the wheel in fists of steel! I concentrate on traffic conditions, trying to pick the best lanes to move to at the best times, calling on the Force to guide me.

And still I get every red light between the venue and my house. Long trip!

The next night, I decide I’ll make the most of the journey. It’s still light enough to read, so I pull out a training plan I’m working on and put it on the seat beside me, ready to chip away at it every time I have to stop at traffic lights. My mind is focussed on what I can write down and about ten minutes into the trip, I’m keenly anticipating the next red light so that I can get to work.

Do you know how many red lights I got that night? None.

That’s right: zilch, zip, nada, nil.

And that’s when I had the thought that changed my life.

Now if I was smarter than I am, I would save this thought, build up a whole lot of hype around it, give it a name like – oh say, The Secret – and put out an expensive video and hardback book to make as much money from it as I could.

But here I am giving it to you. The greatest time-saving tip you will ever receive. And it’s free!

Are you ready? Here’s the thought I had:

“Whenever you want a red light, you can’t get one!”

I hope you understand the magnitude of this discovery. It’s a form of Murphy’s Law turned inside out and applied in the positive. I was in awe of my own discovery and yet, slightly suspicious:

“It can’t be this easy to get green lights all the way home!”

So I tried it out over 6 weeks. Each time I decided I would do something at the lights, something I couldn’t legally or practically do while steering a moving vehicle, I got only green lights. Sometimes I would have to slow slightly because of the poor sods in the cars in front who HAD caught the red light. But I’d never have to stop and I was barely inconvenienced by this. I urge you to try this.

Remember I’m not recommending that you write while you’re driving. The point is that you try to do something at the lights. So before you start the car…

• take the book you’re reading and place the chapter you’re up to open on the seat next to you
• open a tub of yoghurt, stick in a spoon and place it in your cup-holder
• get some forms ready to fill in
• place the draft of the document you’re writing on the seat beside you …

…and start your engines. It works!

When we use this principle, we are making Murphy’s Law work for us.

In the same way, scientists have used many Laws in their own favour. They have found ways to make the Law of Aerodynamics overcome the Law of Gravity. Scientists use the Law of Gravity to help space-probes slingshot around planets, adding propulsion and helping to steer them.

In the family and in the workplace, there’s another Law we can make work in our favour. It’s called the Law of Respect. It goes a little something like this:

there are billions of people on the planet

you are one of them

they’re all as valuable as you

This law appears in the teachings of great thinkers from Jesus (Do unto others as you would have them do unto you) to Dale Carnegie (it runs right through his classic How to Win Friends and Influence People).

But ironically, although it’s about humility and empathy, this Law can work for you and I. Here’s just one way:

• Listen carefully to another person’s ideas and perspectives today.

• Suspend your own judgement about the topic of conversation

• Ask questions to understand them better and to draw them out

• Finish the conversation by recapping on what they’ve said and affirming them (sincerely) on their thinking, or their values, or something specific they said.

Then notice their response. I bet you there is a sudden increase in rapport between you, a smile on their face and gratitude (for the respect you’ve shown them) in their words. Chances are they will even ask you your opinion and listen in the same spirit as you have. Most of the time when you do this, you will either make a friend or strengthen an existing relationship.

Try it out. Go on…

(And by the way: safe driving!)

[and if this post looks familiar, it's because it once appeared at Great Circle about 2 years ago, then got deleted when I"refined" the content over there... But the poor post deserves to live, dammit!]

Dr Kimmel @ Evolution of Dad

Check out Evolution of Dad!

Memories

Another year ended huh? I bet it’s been a doozy. You had ups. You had downs. You had victories. You had disappointments.

And so did your kids.

So, how will each of you remember it? Will you remember it? What will mark the completion of a season, what will cement the lessons learned from its events, what will bring healing from its conflicts and pains? 

Sometime late in the year, I heard someone mention the idea of capturing each year’s events and themes in a kind of family history. It got me thinking…

The Aldin family could certainly benefit from such a tradition.

And so the idea I’ve come up with is to keep a permanent record of the next few years in the form of a ‘book’. For all I know, it’s been done before. But not by our family.

Each of us gets to answer the questions below, and choose two digital photos that represent our favourite memories of the year just gone. Then on New Year’s Eve, we’ll read our answers and “talk story” about 2007, before placing them in the book.

The questions are simple:

• My favourite movie this year:
• I really enjoyed going to the __________ because _____________________.
• Three cool things about my birthday:
• My holiday:
• A cool thing that God did:
• My achievements:
• The hardest thing I had to do was…
• Something I wish didn’t happen:
• A funny thing I heard:

2007 has been an incredibly emotional year for us, full of the extremes of grieving and celebration, public conflict and making new friends, villains and heroes, kids moving schools and my wife changing jobs, etc etc. I’m hoping this new tradition will bring closure and bring us even closer together.

Do you have a family tradition to close out the year and leave a record for your kids for later ?

Thought for the Day

“Don’t handicap your children by making their lives easy.”

Robert A Heinlein

Thought for the Day

The guys who fear becoming fathers don’t understand that fathering is not something perfect men do, but something that perfects the man.  The end product of child raising is not the child but the parent. 

~Frank Pittman, Man Enough

“My Concern is My Child”

Thanks to Markk (again!) for this link and this thought. (Yes, alright I’m stealing your post. Feel free to steal one of mine).

The following quote belongs to columnist Jack Marx from a sensationally-title post Breeders…

For some time after the birth of my own boy, I was troubled by an altogether unexpected affliction: a loathing of other children. Where I had expected fatherhood to invest me with a newfound affection for all kids, the very opposite occurred, and for a few years I struggled with combative urges when in the company of other parents and their children. At the time, I put this down to some ancient biological instinct – one that ensured I would not find another child so pleasing as to move me to abandon my own – and, as I observed the behaviour of other parents at day care centres, I realised I was not exactly unusual.

Parents did battle over anything, always on behalf of their voiceless child. The parents of an anaphylactic boy, for example, who pleaded with a nursery to ban the nut products that would be fatal to their baby, were opposed by parents defending their three-year-old’s “right” to eat peanut butter sandwiches. The legendary parental concern for all children was never more absent than at an assembly of parents, anxiety over their own child’s quality of life triumphing always over the common good.

For me, this unsavoury suspicion of other children withered as my own boy grew, but what remains is a love and a loyalty that can be defeated by nothing. My support of issues about which I was once quite passionate is now entirely dependent on how they affect my boy, and, if it were to come to such extremes, I would break any law, extinguish any life and mow down any army to protect him. When it comes to the interests of the broader community, my jealous love for my child renders me a completely unreliable member of society. The “rights” of others can go to hell – they are the concern of others. My concern is my child.

In the realms of “concerned” parenthood, I do not believe I am a novelty.

Markk’s question was Do parents hate other parents’ kids? You can go read my grotty response over there.

My question is: In what situations have you found yourself protecting or standing by your child in opposition to others?

My Parenting Non-Manifesto: 10 Ways to Freak Out as a Father

Well, I was going to sit down and write a proper parenting manifesto, like the ones that recently appeared on Rebel Dad’s site, but then I read some of the ones on Rebel Dad and asked myself “Why not just direct people over there?” (Hence the link above)

So here’s something else instead:

10 Ways to Freak Out as a Father

OR

How to Make Life Miserable for You and Everyone Else You Come in Contact with (in 10 Easy Steps)

1. Demand perfection from your child. After all, they came from your genetic stock, didn’t they?
2. In the unfortunate circumstance that your child isn’t perfect, blame your partner. After all, she contributed some of the genetic stock too!
3. Expect yourself to be perfect. For example, expect yourself to wear 6 or 7 “hats” at once; expect yourself to act sane when you have had an average of an hour’s sleep each night for the past month. You get the picture…
4. Then again, other people will probably make a lot of crazy demands of you, so feel free to make excuses for why you can’t always be responsible or proactive.
5. Keep all your anxiety, anger and confusion bottled up inside until you can’t contain it anymore. That seems to work for so many other men, doesn’t it?
6. Now that you have a baby or toddler, convince yourself that the reason why your wife doesn’t show you as much affection any more is because she doesn’t love you, thinks you’re a pain, has become really really thoughtless, or suddenly finds you unattractive.
7. Let yourself believe that the lack of bedroom boogie going on means the end of life as you know it and is the perfect justification for seeking the attentions of other women at the office, the squash court or even at the supermarket.
8. As your children grow older, speak harshly and disrespectfully to them constantly. This (we’ve been told) will develop strong morals in them and teach them to treat you with respect.
9. Whatever you do, if you have to play with your kids, for goodness sake don’t let them choose the game! They might beat you or else have some form of fun that doesn’t make sense to your generation
10. If the kid whines, give him what he wants. It’s the only way to stop him.